Cortana is the personal voice-assistant app for Windows Phone 8.1. The current look of Cortana is both futuristic and minimalist, being represented as an orb with animation. You can activate Cortana in windows 8.1 by the Halo character. It works very similarly to Siri. You can ask for things in natural language, rather than worrying about learning set phrases as you do with Siri.

Cortana can set alarms, make calls and send texts, toggle settings on and off, give directions, play music and find local restaurants. It’s context-aware so, you can follow one request with another, such as “Find me the nearest pizza place” with “How long will it take to drive to the first place on the list”.

You can view what Cortana knows about you in the settings and edit it at any time. Some information she will know automatically, such as the times and locations of your meetings or forthcoming flights. Other information such as your family members or close friends you’ll have to program in, along with your interests.

You can also set reminders, including when you arrive at a certain destination. For example, “remind me to pay my gas bill when I get home”.

Cortana understands relationships so you can say “remind me next time I speak to my brother to ask about the new car”. The reminder will then pop up when you call, text or email that person.

If you’re in a situation where you can’t talk – because it’s too noisy or quiet – you can simply type the request. Cortana won’t speak back to you, instead relaying the information on screen silently.

Cortana makes you smile

Cortana was designed to have a personality. She can chit chat, and is funnier than 50% of your friends (we think). Go ahead, ask her anything.

Microsoft opened the door of support for its new partner Micromax – one of the leading mobile manufacturers. With this support WP8.1 was available for the Indian mobile giant and they launched 2 windows based phone for the first time named Canvas Win121 and Canvas Win W092.

Actually Microsoft made one announcement back in the month of the Feb 2014 at Mobile World Congress with Qualcomm Technologies, Inc that they will provide the windows technology at no cost for the instruments less than 9”. These two phones is the result of that announcement. Microsoft believes that providing windows without any single penny to its partners will make them able to bag in the windows phones swiftly in their portfolio.

Price of these phone is also very effective factor as one can buy Win121 & W092 at INR 9500/- & 6500/- respectively. In Asian market price matters a lot and with this cost these phones will become very popular.

Specification of these both phones is very interesting as below

Canvas Win W121: This dual-sim phone comes with 5” HD screen, 8MP camera with single LED flash and 2 MP front camera. 8GB internal storage with the option of expansion till 32GB, best thing is that it is backed-up with Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 quad-core processor with 1GB of memory. In addition this device has sensors for proximity, gravity, and light. Company provides this device with back panel made from pure lather.

Canvas Win092: This device is 1’smaller than W121 and had WVGA display. Back camera is 5MP with single LED flash and front is 0.3MP. Storage capacity and processor is same as W121.

Overall these phones are very good options for both the windows phone lovers and budget conscious. If you thinking to buy good smart phone you must have to think about these devices.

Just some month’s back Microsoft brings window phone 8 with new exciting features like below: